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Early dusk is dark and cold in this corner of Herefordshire, the chill of early autumn creeping over the landscape.
The base is asleep at this hour. The usual sounds of an active army base teeming with mainly young men die down in the wee hours of the night.
For Ghost, this is the time he begins to feel restless, when no one else is awake yet, when he’s completely alone.
He sits on the edge of his bed in the dark of his room, the old standard issued mattress squeaking under his weight.
He scrubs a hand over his face, dragging his fingers down over his jaw. The sensation of sharp stubble under his fingertips shakes the grogginess from his brain, replacing it with a tightness in his chest.
He stands quickly, reaching for the black balaclava sitting in its place on the dresser, pausing to feel the soft slippery fabric for a moment. He pulls it over his head, adjusting the hole to fit his eyes properly.
As he does, he notices his bed, a small huff escapes his clothed lips as he walks back and begins making his bed with practiced efficiency. Tucking in the loose ends of his duvet, running his palms over the bedspread until smooth.
After a brief inspection of his work, giving it the completely arbitrary mental stamp of approval, he allows himself to get back to the task at hand.
In the cramped, poorly lit bathroom at the end of the hall, he stands hunched over the tiny sink, shaving the almost undetectable length of hair from his chin.
This close to the mirror, the scars littering his skin are hard to ignore despite their familiarity, the pearlescent sheen of the pale marks catching the light, stealing his attention.
A sharp sting and a spot of red reclaim his gaze, a drip of blood oozing slowly down his chin, mixing with what remains of the shaving cream. He curses softly to himself, wiping the drop with his fingers, only spreading it around.
The squeeze in his chest tightens, an icy grip on his sternum, the silent warning.
He shuts his eyes tightly.
It’s just a knick for fuck’s sake, you’re fine, it’s fine.
He assures himself without speaking, the press in his chest easing slowly.
A deep inhale, a shaky exhale.
He rinses the mess from his chin, ducking down into the basin of the sink, watching the pink foamy water swirl down the drain.
Standing up straight, the small cut in his chin is still bleeding. A red water-thinned rivulet running down the column of his throat, disappearing beneath the neck of his shirt.
His jaw moves under his skin, jumping as he clenches his molars together.
He meets his own dark eyes in the mirror, an armoured intensity in his gaze.
You’re fine.
~
Despite the detached masked soldier those unacquainted with him see; all shifty eyes and noncommittal shrugs, Ghost is regimented to a degree that most would deem neurotic. Though no one has ever been brave or dumb enough to say it to his face.
Out there, on the field, chaos is the standard.
He follows orders blindly, shoots first, asks questions later, consistently bets his life against unknown or oftentimes dogshit odds, and in truth, always expects the worst, not daring to hope for an acceptable outcome, let alone the best.
In here, in the privacy of his familiar spaces, the juxtaposition is almost comical.
Shoes side by side against the wall by the door, pens and papers lined up in parallels on his desk top, clothes hung and folded with precision in his closet, not a thread out of place.
The opposite of how you’d expect Ghost’s room to look.
The space in keeping with that of a brown-nosing office worker anticipating a promotion rather than a highly lethal spec ops agent.
One who gets paid to run around the desert killing people, clad in grimy camo caked in mud and dried blood.
Contrary to many a shrink’s incorrect assumptions, his compulsive tendencies don’t stem from his tumultuous work environment;
In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
The explanation you usually hear behind why anyone would join the military almost always has something to do with the benefits.
Free healthcare and dental, pension plans and child support; in a world where the cost of living is so high and your basic human rights come with a price tag, countless men and women jump at any opportunity to provide for themselves and their loved ones, willing to sacrifice everything.
Giving up their precious time and freedom, shedding blood in the name of ‘following orders’, dying for a country that doesn’t give a shit about them.
The honour of having fought for your country just isn’t enough anymore, the shiny veneer is decaying, revealing the rot beneath.
Despite the majority of enlisted lured in by the many perks, a surprising number of them, regardless of their motives, will give the patriotic answer; fighting for Queen and Country and all that manure.
A lot of the time you get those naive bastards fresh out of sixth form who spent much of their adolescent years on forums composed almost entirely of slurs written by racist incels airing their grievances from the perceived safety of their mothers’ basements.
Rather than an honourable calling to fight for one’s nation, the focus is more on the colour of the enemy’s skin or the fact that the language they speak is not English.
As for Ghost, he has either completely ignored the question or lied every time he’s been asked.
Because for him, his answer is different.
For Ghost, out on the battlefield and an inch away from death in every direction is the only place he’s found respite. An escape from the incessant buzz that foreshadows the urges that control him, plague him.
Staring through the scope of a rifle silences that din, the only sound in his head is the tinnitus in his left ear, a welcome annoyance in comparison.
He doesn’t crave control like most people in his line of work would.
What he craves, is a free fall.
Those moments when everything goes quiet, when instinct takes over, when every second is a coin toss, every move a gamble.
When control is ripped from his clutches.
Those are the moments he lives for, like an addict scraping up just one more hit.
What they say about the devil and idle hands is especially true for Ghost.
Too much time, too much quiet, too much opportunity and he abuses it. He steals it and hoards it, fixes and straightens and obsesses until he’s blue in the face, until the satisfaction that comes from righting all the wrongs wears off.
Until the high fades.
It seemed a fated match, a maladjusted obsessive compulsive with risk seeking tendencies and daddy issues, the perfect soldier.
Neatness is engrained into you when you’re in the military, regular barrack inspections instill a bone-deep habit for tidiness in even the most unregimented recruits.
Unlike most soldiers, Ghost’s habits didn’t come from standing nose to nose with his higher ups, enduring the spit-sprayed castigations that were so often handed out to those less regimented.
Ideally, a healthy fear of authority gained from both praise and punishment.
Though born from a similar place, the habits Ghost carry do not bring a sense of pride as they ought to, evidence of a soldier’s dedication and discipline.
Instead, they come from his father.
Every time he notices something out of place, every time he tries to ignore it, that itching, gnawing, crushing sensation is impossible to deny.
Behind it is not the fear of a write up or leisure time revoked like most of his comrades, but a whisper in the back of his mind.
An unintelligible warning muttered from the yellow-toothed mouth of his late father, thrashing in the cage of his ribs, echoing off the walls of his skull.
A warning of danger, of death, of calamity, all teetering on a knife’s edge, or, less assumingly, but no less real in Ghost’s mind, the tip of a pencil, askew on his desk.
The sting of ringed knuckles across his cheek, the suffocating damp of a club toilet, the hiss of a viper, poised to strike. These are the reasons, the motivators.
The rabid dogs snapping at his heels.
It’s followed close behind him since childhood, a shadow of sorts, glued to his back like a second skin.
The blighted roots from which something grew, blooming alongside him through the years.
Its creeping vines lined with thorns like jagged teeth, entwining, enveloping, puncturing.
The twisted ivy wraps his bones like a trellis, invading every orifice, refusing to release.
Every life taken, every near death experience, every vivid nightmare is a new tendril, another thorn.
Every day since the seed took root, each trauma compounds and aggravates, triggering the vines to tighten, like a constrictor crushing its prey.
In the past, the branches would grow so wild and tangled he felt as if he was being dragged down, down into the damp earth, buried alive.
These days, save for a few, the vines feel as though they’re sleeping, conserving energy in the bleak winter, waiting for the first signs of spring.
Not dead, asleep.
~
All his life, Simon was weak.
The toxins leeching from the strangling flora polluted his blood, losing days or even weeks to the enveloping darkness, sinking further and further into the cool damp soil with no strength or will to reach upwards.
The day he joined the military was the day he pulled himself from the earth, gasping as he broke the surface, inhaling the fresh air like a man starved.
For the first time in years, Simon had felt… hopeful.
It wasn’t much, but it was hope nonetheless.
The vines that entangled him for years felt looser somehow.
They hadn’t let go all together, but the usual suffocating embrace was less now, something akin to a compression rather than a crush.
The first deployments were ones he’ll never forget.
Out on the field, gunfire echoing over the barren waste, the screams of dying men piercing the fog.
The sense of stillness that swept over him like the glassy surface of calm waters.
Chaos became the switch that never failed to make the noise stop.
It was addictive.
He found himself missing the action as soon as he was allowed to rest, the pressure rising in the quiet.
He felt stronger, less fractured.
He dealt with his past more readily, saving his family from destitution and facing his abusive father as a man, as a soldier.
For the first time in his life, he felt light.
He knows better now, that it never would have lasted.
The mission in Mexico. The cartel. Roba.
In hindsight, Simon had no idea what was about to happen. Ignorant to how easily hope can be dashed to pieces, how fragile he really was.
In that casket, the acrid stench of death was so strong he could taste it, the rotting corpse beneath him squelching under his weight, brittle bones cracking against his back.
Fumbling in the pitch black, beating his hands bloody against the cold wood surrounding him. Frantic breaths and panicked screams deafening in the confined space.
Inevitably, something breaks.
In that void of pure terror, your options are thus;
You fight, or you die.
Beaten, broken, and starving after countless weeks at the hands of Roba and his men, Simon was tired.
At that moment, in that impenetrable blackness, he wanted to sleep.
His brain addled as he suffocates, synapses flickering weakly as his body gives up. The cool darkness envelops him, cradling him gently, careful not to startle or scare as it constricts ever tighter.
As the walls close in, as his lungs struggle for oxygen, he remembers.
I’ve been here before, haven’t I?
A sense of peace washes over him, a comforting haze settling.
At least I’m already in a casket, he thinks.
At least I’m not alone.
In the silence, as the life is wringed from his body, sinking deeper into the darkness, something happens.
A squeeze in his chest, a word surfacing from the depths of his dying mind.
Fight. Fight. Fight.
It repeats like a chant, rousing him minutely from the void.
I’m tired, I don’t want to fight anymore.
His dying brain supplies, utterly exhausted, stripped of any sense of purpose.
Fight. Fight. Fight.
The thought begins to materialize, not just a word, a voice. A sense of urgency pulling at the edges of his consciousness.
Fight. Fight. Fight.
He recognizes the voice now as that of his father. Muffled as if underwater, but unmistakably his.
Fight. Fight. Fight.
As his father’s voice becomes clearer, he feels a familiar twist in his gut. The words are not uttered in encouragement, but soaked with disdain, curling with disgust.
A tear threatens to spill from the corner of his eye at the sound of his father’s voice, his eyes burning as a sense of dread pulses somewhere deep in his hindbrain.
Please dad. I can’t, I can’t. Don’t make me, please don’t make me. He pleads silently, the hot tear streaking down his cheek and into the shell of his ear.
Please, plea-
FUCKING FIGHT!
His eyes shoot open, darting around wildly in the pitch dark, his chest heaving, heart pounding through his ribs.
The yell echoes through his skull, the last drops of adrenaline rush from the depths of him, filling his veins like a drug.
The last time he was buried, his surfacing was a resurrection, a return to a life he had hoped would prove worth the effort, worth the climb.
This time was different, though he didn’t know it at the moment.
This time, it was a birth.
The man who dug his way out wasn’t the man his enemies buried.
That man died that night, refusing to fight, suffocating in that casket and rotting away into the earth.
Begging the father he despised to help him.
The night Simon died, was the night Ghost was born.
Red-faced and screaming as he clawed his way out, decaying jawbone in hand, throat full of mud.
It wasn’t sacred or beautiful as births are meant to be. It was an irreverent rite of passage, an irreversible self-inflicted mutilation.
That night marks the end of one life, and the beginning of another. An obituary and a birth certificate traded between earth and atmosphere.
A genesis.